Given the progressive drift in Italy, as well as cultural changes, a predicted nationalist PM will not be able to take the country in a Hungarian-Polish direction.
A victory for the right in next month’s Italian election, with the prospect of the country’s first female Prime Minister – Giorgia Meloni – is provoking panic in the European Union (EU), amid fears of a Viktor Orbán-like figure in the heart of western Europe and the historic heart of European Catholicism. There are concerns that a coalition of Forza Italia, Meloni’s Fratelli d’Italia and nationalist Matteo Salvini’s Lega Nord will take Italy down a far-right path and implode the EU to boot. But the reality, as is often the case, is far less dramatic and the Meloni meltdown wholly unwarranted.
